Spam Kings by Brian S McWilliams

Author:Brian S McWilliams [McWilliams, Brian S]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: COMPUTERS / Social Aspects / General
ISBN: 9781491913789
Publisher: O’Reilly Media
Published: 2014-09-08T21:00:00+00:00

Cowles was hashing out an entirely different set of questions in his cell at the Wood County Justice Center. He was astounded that state attorneys in Florida had decided to file criminal charges against him. As he saw it, the case was a simple civil dispute between former business partners over the ownership of five computers. Why were prosecutors in both Florida and Ohio dedicating thousands of dollars to such a silly case? And why were they doing it all on behalf of a convicted money launderer and cocaine dealer?

Cowles partly blamed Hoffmann for his situation. He believed she had cajoled authorities into pursuing the charges against him, probably under the pretense that it was a great way to incapacitate one of the Internet’s biggest spammers. But most of all, he blamed Marin.

Cowles ended up spending four nights in the pokey, thanks to a bureaucratic screw up that delayed his arraignment until Monday morning. So as not to miss the event, Hoffmann and a friend arrived at the Bowling Green Municipal Courthouse twenty minutes early. Hoffmann had learned that prisoners didn’t appear in person and instead were arraigned over closed-circuit television, so she took a seat in the courtroom’s third row near the TV.

While they waited for the start of the hearing, Hoffmann and her friend noticed a young woman walk into the courtroom and head right toward them. Hoffmann hadn’t seen the woman before, but she immediately knew it was Cowles’s Russian wife, Dasha.

Dasha strode to the front row, turned around to face Hoffmann, and pulled something out of her purse. There was a flash of light as she snapped Hoffmann’s photo with a disposable camera.

“You have to leave,” ordered Dasha.[13]

Hoffmann was stunned. “No, we don’t. We have a right to be here,” she replied, looking around for the bailiff or anyone else in authority who could back her up. But the courtroom was empty.

Her pretty face contorted with anger, Dasha pointed at Hoffmann. “We are filing a stalking complaint against you. And trespassing. You can’t harass us like this.”

In researching Cowles, Hoffmann had learned that Dasha kept a tank of eight piranhas in her house. Seeing Dasha in person for the first time, Hoffmann understood the younger woman’s taste in pets.

“I’m not stalking anybody, and I’m staying right here,” Hoffmann replied.

Dasha scowled at Hoffmann before turning away and walking briskly out of the courtroom. Moments later, she returned with a half-dozen people, including Cowles’s attorney, father, and sister. Without making eye contact with Hoffmann, they filed into the row ahead of her on the other side of the aisle and took their seats.

The hearing lasted only a few minutes. Cowles appeared on the TV monitor, wearing his prison uniform and looking nearly as disheveled as he had in his arrest photo.

After brief statements by Cowles’s attorney and the county prosecutor, the judge set the bond at $5,000 and ordered Cowles to deal with the grand theft charges in Florida before March 29, when the judge would conduct Cowles’s extradition hearing.

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